The "Big Read" Wants Writers

Community members are invited to contribute a short coming-of-age poem or prose entry to be part of an art exhibit in the conference room at the Orcas Island Library. The art exhibit will be in celebration of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, selected by the Orcas Island Writers Festival to be the community’s [intlink id=”writers-festivals-2nd-year-plan-a-literary-double-header” type=”post”]Big Read[/intlink]

The “Big Read” is a community book-reading event, underwritten in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Paul Allen Foundation in the Northwest. The Orcas Island Writers Festival will be featuring Allen Young, a poet and scholar of Their Eyes Were Watching God and the second annual Writers Festival to be held Sept. 17 -20.

Barbara Lewis, Orcas Writers Festival Director says, “The specific inspiration [for the coming-of-age exhibit] is a transformative scene in Hurston’s novel when the main character, Janie, looks up at a pear tree and experiences a coming-of-age moment.

The passage is posted in the Orcas Island Library conference room, and is found in chapter two of the book, pages 10 and 11 in the edition with the maroon cover. The passage is also posted below.

Writers are asked to remember a similar event. Entries (up to 450 words) may be delivered  to the library’s conference room, where there is a box for submissions, or emailed as a Word document to festivalgurus@orcasislandwritersfestival.com. Submissions will be accepted September 1-10, 2009.

From Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (p. 10-11; Harper Perennial, 2006)

“It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that pear tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From the barren brown stems to the glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to the snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about her consciousness.

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from the root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing and delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Jamie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.

After a while she got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire. She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers.

A personal answer for all other creatures except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How? She found herself at the kitchen door and stumbled inside. In the air of the room were flies tumbling and singing, marrying and giving in marriage. When she reached the narrow hallway she was reminded that her grandmother was home with a sick headache. She was lying across the bed asleep so Janie tipped on out of the front door. Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the be ginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma’s house answered her. She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road. Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made.”